President Reagan arrived in Venice on Wednesday night for an upcoming economic summit conference, and his national security adviser said the President will press the allies here "for greater coordination, cooperation and support in the Persian Gulf." As Reagan crossed the Atlantic, the subject of the tense waterway through which much of Western Europe's oil must pass loomed ever larger as a key topic expected during the meeting of the major industrial democracies, which begins Monday.

With the investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks slowing in the United States, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft plans to travel overseas next week to confer with European officials about the next steps in the expanding international war on terrorism, senior law enforcement officials said Friday.

The United States has begun preparing to fire another big salvo in its trade dispute with the European Community over Europe's move Jan. 1 barring imports of American beef from animals treated with growth-inducing hormones. In a move that could escalate the skirmish substantially, the Agriculture Department has sent a letter to major European governments questioning whether they have been maintaining proper standards in inspecting European meat that is being shipped to the United States.

The Bush administration stands immovably opposed to an international plan to combat global warming, U.S. officials reiterated Thursday, but all other countries key to its success touted encouraging progress toward a treaty that will parcel out targets for reducing "greenhouse gases." The first day of high-level talks among 185 countries in the U.N. Convention on Climate Change reflected both increasing U.S.

President Clinton on Thursday called the Bosnian Serb assembly's rejection of a peace plan a "grave disappointment" and--in a blunt challenge to U.S. allies in Europe--demanded that the international community agree to "act quickly and decisively" against the Serbs.

Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger, speaking out jointly for the first time since they left office, have issued an extraordinary warning to President Reagan that it would be "a profound mistake" to sign a nuclear arms reduction agreement unless Moscow accepts major changes in the formula now being negotiated. The former President and his chief foreign policy adviser declared that there is "little doubt" a U.S.

"I view this as very, very important diplomacy," President Bush said recently as he unveiled a new mission for Vice President Dan Quayle. The words Bush used to heighten the diplomatic standing of a series of three trips Quayle is to make to Central and South America over the next two months apply equally to the political importance of the trips for Quayle--and perhaps for Bush himself. Details of the journeys are likely to be announced today.

In a flurry of diplomatic maneuvers surrounding the confrontation with Iraq, President Bush has agreed to cancel $7.1 billion in debts Egypt owes the United States for military equipment, is considering a massive new sale of weapons to Israel and may meet within the week with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Administration officials said Friday. At the same time, U.S.

The venerable French newspaper Le Monde, seldom quick with praise for American leaders, said in a Friday editorial that President Bush's command of the allied war effort has made him "the most popular American President since Harry Truman on the day after victory in 1945." The mass-circulation German tabloid Bild Zeitung compared the American President to Otto von Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor" who unified Germany in the 19th Century.

A World Trade Organization panel upheld a key U.S. trade law used to impose sanctions against imports from the European Union in disputes over bananas and beef, U.S. officials said Wednesday. In a 350-page report, the WTO panel rejected complaints by the 15-nation EU that Washington's use of the so-called Section 301 trade law to impose trade sanctions violated global trade rules. The panel said aspects of the law challenged by the EU "are not inconsistent" with U.S. obligations under the WTO.

Last month, when President Bush showed up in Sweden to explain his reasons for dropping out of a global agreement on climate change, he promised European leaders that he would not interfere with their efforts to carry out the accord. But some European diplomats now say the administration appears to be backing away from that promise and creating obstacles for countries still committed to ratifying the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming.

Long before the Iron Curtain fell 12 years ago, Western Europeans could get a whiff of what might have been their future. Coal smoke in Prague left soot in a visitor's nostrils. Exhaust-spewing jalopies on the streets of Budapest cast a pall of sulfurous smog over the city. From East Berlin to Bucharest, factories belched so much ambient poison that respiratory ailments were epidemic in industrialized cities.

A diplomatic charm offensive by the Bush administration aimed at persuading skeptical NATO allies that they need a space-based missile shield has sold Europeans on the style of the U.S. pitch but not the substance of the project. The high-level delegation that swept across the continent this week also made headway in convincing security partners that a new concept of strategic deterrence is needed to ward off threats from strange new menaces labeled "nations of concern."

Dole Food Co., the world's largest fruit and vegetable producer, blasted a settlement between the U.S. and European Union over EU banana-import rules, saying the accord favors rival Chiquita Brands International Inc. The agreement, which allocates shares of the EU banana market to producers from various parts of the world before the quotas are scrapped in 2006, is anti-free trade, said Westlake Village-based Dole.

European Union governments on Tuesday hailed their agreement on a pioneering plan to allow duty-free access to its markets for virtually all products from the world's poorest countries. "This is a global first," said a triumphant EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy after foreign ministers adopted his hard-won proposal after five months of debate.

Colin L. Powell leaves today for a whirlwind tour of the Middle East and Europe, but the tenor of his first overseas trip as secretary of State has been transformed as a result of the U.S.-British airstrike on Iraq last week. The secretary may well find that the honeymoon for the Bush administration on foreign policy is already over--at least when it comes to the Mideast, U.S. analysts and Mideast experts say.

A late-winter squall has blown up in transatlantic relations, one that could escalate into a springtime hurricane. It seems downright paradoxical, but even as the United States and many countries of Western Europe cooperate on seeking an end to ethnic bloodletting in the Balkans and on charting a new course for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, differences over trade are the most damaging in years. "Some people believe this is the new conflict after the Soviets have gone," observed U.S.

For decades, a line connecting London, Paris, Berlin and Rome defined the circumference of the political and economic Europe with which Washington concerned itself. But as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expanded to include an Eastern Europe emerging from the Soviet grip, an underlying theme of the Clinton administration has been to reconstruct the United States' relations with Europe.

On the Bush administration's maiden voyage into the choppy waters of transatlantic relations, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld put European allies on notice Saturday that the Pentagon will press ahead with a national missile defense despite their objections. Rumsfeld and a chorus of U.S.

When I first met Brett Ratner, he was basking in the success of having directed "Rush Hour," the Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan action comedy that was the surprise hit of 1998. Then 29, Ratner was living large. He'd been getting congratulatory calls from Jonathan Demme and Roman Polanski. Sony was wooing him to do "Charlie's Angels." Warren Beatty was having him over to his house. But despite all the attention, something was bugging the young director. The one movie Ratner wanted to make was the one no one would let him direct: "The Family Man," the new romantic drama starring Nicolas Cage that took in an estimated $12.8 million this past weekend.